154 Matter Dead. [February, 
of the sea ; or it would be a dash against an immovable 
shore, from which too there was no rebound. 
I may even go farther still. Let us suppose some of the 
elements heated : I doubt if this heat could be communicated 
to the others. I do not know that an atom can touch an 
atom ; if not the heat could not be communicated through 
the empty space. This ether, unknown as it is, may be 
required to bridge over the same distance between atom and 
atom. Where, then, is the force of your atom and its power 
of life ? To live it requires the aid of a something only 
beginning to be recognised as matter, and the ingenious 
Lucretius and all similar thinkers to this day have specu- 
lated on an empty supposition. We have seen that our 
matter is dead unless it has heat, that heat cannot be con- 
veyed to it unless by means of a something that we must 
suppose to exist, but whose existence is unintelligible to us, 
and which has none of the properties usually assigned to 
matter. Moreover, even if this something is allowed to 
exist in abundance it cannot give heat, but can only 
convey it. 
John Dalton — I am willing to concede the ether as matter 
and the heat as motion ; then I think we have all the pre- 
paration for the heat which you require. 
Roger Bacon — If you concede the ether as matter you go 
before many physicists and chemists. You observe the 
quotation I unade from a very recent book that matter is 
that which possesses weight. I never heard of the ether 
gravitating. You concede then the point that the elements 
known to chemists do not show any activity or vitality of 
themselves, and they must be warmed before they adt. You 
allow that the elements have not initiated chemical 
activity, and that is a great concession, and I think it only 
an honest one demanded by the known fadts. You allow 
that we must bring in motion from the exterior. You allow 
that when we have it in any amount it will never reach the 
elements, however near, unless the ether intervene. You 
allow also, I think, that even the motion of heat will in all 
probability not pass from molecule to molecule, let us say, or 
our present chemical atoms. Surely then it is not far wrong 
to say of our elements, regarding them as the total matter 
of the universe ; matter is dead. 
